Business Analyst (BA) Jobs

Latest jobs for Business Analyst (BA)

Business Analysis is an incredibly broad area in IT and a BA can sit anywhere on a spectrum from highly technical through to process mapping. The core of business analysis is to engage with key stakeholders and business users to elicit their requirements, often at time of change within an organisation.

Skills a Business Analyst needs

Here are the four key skills we think any Business Analyst needs to possess to be great at their job.

Problem Solving –Business Analysts are often presented with obscure descriptions of problems and requirements that may not accurately describe what the business needs. It is the Business Analysts job to probe and ask questions in order to hone and refine the problem, then investigate and document how to solve it.

Critical Thinking – A Business Analyst weighs up the evidence and considers the implications before making a recommendation. Requirements may sound reasonable in isolation, but may conflict with other aspects of the business. It’s the Business Analyst’s job to recognise the flow-on effects of a change, questions if a requirement serves the business objective, and evaluates the risk changes may carry.

Good Documentation Skills – Business Analysts spend a lot of time writing documents, typically outlining requirements that are specific and must avoid ambiguity.

Good Communication Skills – Business Analysts talk to various stakeholders at multiple levels of the organisation. They need to be good at interviewing people in order to glean the information necessary. They facilitate meetings and serve as a bridge between different parts of an organisation, translating business needs to ‘IT-speak’ and vice versa.

Roles & responsibilities of a Business Analyst

The roles and responsibilities of a business analysts can be broad, depending on the industry in which the Business Analyst (BA) is working. For example, some Business Analysts focus on processes, like an end-to-end manufacturing process, whilst others may focus on specific business area or system e.g. a financial system.

Business Analysis typically involves – but is not limited to – the following areas:

Creating and maintaining business architecture

Defining the an organisation’s policies and approach

Standardising an organisation’s workflows

Systems analysis

Conducting feasibility studies

Identifying new business opportunities

Scoping and defining business opportunities

Preparing the business case

Conducting risk assessment

Planning the requirements development process, determining which requirements are the highest priority for implementation, and managing change.

Gathering requirements

Communicating requirements

Documenting processes and changes required

Process validation

The day to day work of a Business Analyst

Being a business analyst involves wearing a number of hats.

A Business Analyst will facilitate meetings. S/he will ask appropriate questions in order to get sufficient detail to document the changes necessary. The BA needs to be a good listener in order to pick out salient points, and be good problem solvers, as requirements might be ambiguous, conflicting or poorly defined.

From the information gathered, the Business Analyst will write up requirements. Depending on the development methodology being used, these documents can often be large and complex. Rigorous attention to detail is required as developers will use these documents to design systems. Errors in requirements that flow through into systems can be expensive to fix.

This process can often involve negotiation as trade-offs may be required. The Business Analyst often gets involved in the management of the process as multiple teams in different disciplines need to be brought together to agree on the nature of the problem to be solved.

Business Analysts courses and qualifications

There is no single path to becoming a Business Analyst. Sometimes, Business Analysts come from company business units, as they have insider knowledge of that particular business and its’ processes. Other Business Analysts may come from related IT disciplines, such as Systems Analysis and Software Developers.

Business analysts certification courses and qualifications offered by the industry include the The Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) and related courses. The CBAP is a certification for individuals with extensive business analysis experience. An entry level BA qualification is the BA Foundation Certificate. Both courses are offered by a range of third party training companies in class and online.

Business Analyst salary

Business Analysts salaries obviously vary depending on experience, industry, employer and the nature of the task. In New Zealand, junior/entry level BAs can earn around 70K, BAs with a few years experience start at around 80K and senior BAs start at 95K plus.

“IT employers in 2014 reported 75% of employers were planning to recruit additional staff due to an increase in new projects or customer demand. The survey found business analysis was the area of information technology that ranked highest in employers expectations to recruit for in 2014.

Because of continuing demand for their skills, business analyst appears on Immigration New Zealand’s long-term skill shortage list, which means the Government is actively encouraging skilled professionals in this field from overseas to work in New Zealand.”

Business Analysts are typically employed in medium and large private businesses, and in many government departments. Because demand for experienced Business Analysts is high, both career prospects and job security are considered good.

Latest Articles

In the latest Absolute IT Employer Insight Report we are seeing an interesting trend in terms of the demand for IT skills in the public versus the private sector. Most in-demand IT skills Over the last five years the top three most-in-demand skills from IT employers in New Zealand have been software development, business analysis […]

It’s well known that the IT industry is male-dominated, with New Zealand being no exception to the trend. Although women gain qualifications at an 80% higher rate than men in New Zealand, many are not trained in areas projected to experience high growth. And in 2016, only 22% of students graduating with a Bachelor’s Degrees […]

The 2018 Absolute IT Job Seeker Report reveals that while money is still a big influencing factor for IT professionals, the opportunity to grow and learn new skills can be a huge factor to keep or attract IT talent. Money is not everything As a group, IT professionals rate their base salary as the biggest deciding […]